Films on Friday - Nov 13, 2009

APES, Henry Fonda and a trio of cinema reviews in the movie guide that knows whether you've been naughty or nice.

And I'm afraid you've been naughty. No presents for you. That should save me a few quid.

We're back! Yes, dear reader, exams are over (not very well, thanks for asking) so after a three week hiatus Films on Friday returns, boasting more movies than you could shake a lamb's tail at, if that was the sort of thing you were interested in. In addition to the eerily familiar Films on TV guide, we're continuing the countdown of our Favourite 100 Movies and – for one week only – present no fewer than THREE cinema reviews.

Talk about a bonanza. And when you've finished talking, read this week's Films on Friday, in association with your favourite brand of tea and a nice slice of cake.

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Cinema reviews

These write-ups are notably lacking in jokes, but hopefully you'll warm to them anyway. After all, the jokes are never funny.

Up

Fantastic Mr Fox

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

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Films on TV - Your guide to the week ahead

Nov 14 to 20

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14

FILM OF THE WEEK

My Darling Clementine (1946, More4, 12.10pm) – "You never had too much of a chance in life, did you James?" asks Henry Fonda in John Ford's classic Western*, his brother gunned down in cold blood by the Clanton family. Fonda is Wyatt Earp, the quiet, moustachioed sheriff who comes to clear up the town of Tombstone and finds that means allying with boozing, spluttering saloon-keeper Doc Holliday. This retelling of the shootout at the OK Corral is a semi-remake of the '39 movie Frontier Marshal, but superior in every way, as the myth-making is turned up to 11. "When the fact becomes legend, print the legend," said the journalist in Ford's Liberty Valance. That's what the director does here. He's not showing us the way it was, but the way it should have been. The cast is exceptional – not just Fonda, but Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Ward Bond, Alan Mowbray, Jane Darwell and hulking heartthrob Victor Mature in by far his best screen turn – and the scripting superb, but the most remarkable thing about the movie is its emphasis on telling, unforgettable details. Like the scene where a newly-shaved Earp relaxes by swinging on a porch chair (Ford noticed Fonda doing this on set and worked it into the film), or the barn dance, where the shy lawman cuts loose with some wooden moves. It's one of the key Westerns of the period and still looks terrific today. (5/5)

*Apparently Ford didn't direct this graveside scene, but we'll let that slide, since it's a motif that turns up in many of his films.

Trivia notes: Notorious fibber Ford claimed he had based the film on his own conversations with Earp in the '20s.

If you're wowed by the film, pick up the 'Cinema Reserve' DVD, which includes an earlier cut featuring several of Ford's ideas for the film that were eventually excised.

Never mind How the West Was Won (73 Oscar winners, 16 Nobel Prize winners, four former Mayors of Harrogate and George Peppard), get this for a cast: Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Socrates, Napoleon (him again), Beethoven, Billy the Kid, Sigmund Freud and Abraham Lincoln… They're the historical figures enlisted by the stoner heroes of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989, ITV1, 1.10pm), which is a good deal less thick than it likes to make out. Some choice lines (Bill: "(phonetically) So-crates - 'The only true wisdom consists of knowing you know nothing.'" Ted: "That's us, dude.") and a general playfulness make up for the paper-thin plotting. Pretty good. (3/5)

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994, C4, 9.30pm) is a reasonable romcom, generally undeserving of all the praise foisted upon it, but not bad on its own terms. Essentially a sitcom with a Hollywood romance scrawled over the top of it, the film tracks a group of friends as they attend the film's five get-togethers. Hugh Grant is quite good in his breakthrough role, while Kristin Scott Thomas and Charlotte Coleman do fine work in support, but Simon Callow seems dreadfully overbearing. John Hannah's showstopping clock-stopping is fine, but belongs in another film. (3/5)

Ashes of Time Redux (1994, Film4, 1.05am SUN) is a re-edited version of Wong Kar Wai's baffling, bewitching 1994 movie – one of the most unusual film experiences out there. The film sees a hitman pitch up in the middle of a desert. Crippled by his longing for a lost love, he starts farming out his jobs to others. Subplots include a devilishly complex storyline about two warring halves of the same woman (Brigitte Lin), and a swordsmen who's drinking to forget –and finds a wine that erases memory. WKW was in the midst of his mid-'90s purple patch when he made this one, shooting the low-key international hit Chungking Express during breaks in production, and about to embark on the stunning Fallen Angels. This peculiar, emotionally devastating near-epic may be convoluted in the extreme, but the compensations are tremendous, with spellbinding direction and a faultless performance from the ethereal, tragic leading man Leslie Cheung. Sammo Hung's up-close-and-inexplicably-fuzzy fight choreography, so frustrating elsewhere, actually fits this film perfectly. I haven't seen WKW's new cut, showing tonight, but apparently it's slightly shorter, with a different score, the removal of two early fight scenes and a heap of minor tweaks. Frankly I can't wait. The original gets a (5/5).

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15

Ghost World. Heathers. Brick. Even Juno. Those teen films offered cynical, laconic anti-heroes, speared pop culture targets and the concept of schoolgirl cliques and added a slew of words to the adolescent lexicon. Clueless (1995, C4, 5.45pm) is kind of alright. An update of Jane Austen's Emma, it's pitched somewhere between those irresistible indie comedies I mentioned and the affable, but ultimately mindless fodder of say, Legally Blonde. Sometime figure of 13-year-olds' lust Alicia Silverstone is Cher Horowitz, who helps new student Brittany Murphy find a boyfriend, but struggles to find a mate herself. It's hit-and-miss, and takes the odd step of presenting its heroine as a blinkered airhead, but writer-director Amy Heckerling's script provides a few big laughs, when she isn't striving, self-consciously, for effect. (2/5)

Austin Powers (1997, E4, 10pm) you'll probably know. A none-more-broad spoof of '60s espionage films – including the Harry Palmer series, Our Man Flint and Bond (with the latter two being spoofs or self-parodies themselves) – it stars Mike Myers as a rug-chested superspy who's defrosted after 30 years in a cryogenic chamber and finds himself all at sea in 1997 ("I can't believe Liberace was gay. I mean, women loved him! I didn't see that one coming"). Powers himself is pretty annoying, but Blofeld-esque villain Dr Evil remains a fine comic creation and while it's a scattershot film, and far from a great one, it's worth sticking around for the highlights: the ill-tempered, mutated sea bass, the back stories given to the usually faceless henchmen and the scene in which Powers tries to rip off an old lady's hair, shouting "It's a man!". Well I never said it was sophisticated. A high (2/5).

Worth setting the video (or sacrificing your sleep) for tonight is Wild Strawberries (1957, Film4, 1.35am MON), the most accessible – and best – Ingmar Bergman film I've seen. Victor Sjostrom plays a cantankerous professor en-route to receive an honorary degree. Via flashback – and a miraculous, much-imitated device by which we join him as he strolls through scenes from his life – we learn his story. This is a one-of-a-kind work that exudes a quiet, reflective melancholia but has moments of warmth and humour somewhat atypical of the director's work. It's fantastic. (5/5)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16

The Gunfighter (1950, More4, 11.15am) is perhaps the best of the "reformed gunslinger" Western sub-genre, where a world weary pistol packer tries to reform, but can't escape the violence he's always lived by. Gregory Peck is the outlaw, Jimmy Ringo, who arrives in a small Western town to see his girl, schoolteacher Peggy Walsh. The marshal wants to drive him out of town - and the townsfolk? Well they just want to kill him, if they can quit shaking first. Peck, sometimes wooden but unjustly maligned, is perfect in the lead (he played a similarly interesting character in the neglected classic Yellow Sky the previous year), and there are arresting supporting characterisations from Walsh, Skip Homeier, Millard Mitchell and Karl Malden. This one is built on an intelligent, thoughtful, elegiac script and gets a big boost from its crisp monochrome photography - moodier lighting might have made it look more fatalistic, but it works great this way too. This is the film repeatedly referenced in the great 1986 Bob Dylan song 'Brownsville Girl' (which contains strong spoilers). (5/5)

The Sixth Sense (1999, ITV2, 11pm) has one of the best children's performances of recent decades, as Haley Joel Osment's troubled youngster sees dead people – all the time. Much more than just a twist (please see also: The Crying Game), it's an arresting, original sleeper that offers genuine human emotion alongside the requisite chills. I've seen a couple of movies I didn't cry during, but this wasn't one of them – Osment's monologue about his grandmother, delivered to convince mum Toni Colette that he really can see, y'know, them – may be sentimental, but it's still a knock-out. I liked it. (4/5)

And while I'm praising oft-derided films to the hilt, might I mention how much I enjoyed Wedding Crashers (2005, F4, 9pm) – a bawdy, overlong, morally confused comedy. It's dreadfully funny, compensating for a certain lack of sophistication with a plethora of belly laughs. Perhaps that's always the case. I could draw a graph. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play best buddies whose blissful existence (which consists largely of disrupting other people's nuptials in an alcoholic stupor) is threatened when Vaughn falls in love. It's a cut above the other "Frat Pack" films, being seriously funny rather than just loud and boorish. Will Ferrell's slender talent seems to have stretched a long way thus far, but he has an excellent cameo here as a funeral crasher. And the montage in which an unkempt, unhappy Wilson crashes parties very badly is hysterical. (4/5)

For TUE to FRI picks, please click on the link below right.TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17

A terrific premise and an iconic finale have given Planet of the Apes (1968, C4, 1.15pm) a "classic" status it doesn't really deserve – dystopian visions rarely come camper, or with such a sagging middle third. Still, the audacity of the set-up, in which a trio of astronauts crashland on a planet run by erudite simians, and that arresting ending make it worth a look, with Roddy McDowall and the ever appealing Kim Hunter making up for Charlton Heston's typically weak performance. (3/5)

Highly Dangerous (1950, Film4, 11am) has English rose Margaret Lockwood (sporting unfamiliar-looking cropped hair) teaming with smart-mouthed American reporter Dane Clark (star of the superlative noir, Moonrise) to thwart a germ warfare plot in the Balkans. It's a bit threadbare, with a gimmicky script and the cheap look of so many British films of the period, but harmless entertainment, with a couple of tense bits. (3/5)

Imperial war movie Zulu (1964, Sky Classics, 9pm) is solid going all the way, as an army outpost stuffed with cinematic luminaries is besieged by, well, Zulus. Thousands of them. Michael Caine's starmaking role as upper class officer Lt Bromhead still looks great today, alongside some vivid supporting characterisations. This study of grace - and guts - under pressure is lit by sweeping battle scenes that grow ever more personal. (4/5)

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18

Odd Man Out (1947, BBC2, 11.05am) is one of Britain's finest additions to the film noir canon, an often dazzling thriller let down only by its ill-conceived third act subplot. James Mason is an IRA gunman who's shot during a bank robbery and wanders Belfast in a daze, bleeding to death. Though theoretically a thriller, it's really much more than that, as the film's perfectly-crafted vignettes paint a portrait of the city and of human nature. Mason is helped, unwittingly, by soldiers and housewives, sold out by corrupt friends and – in the film's solitary misstep – painted in his ailing state by boozy artist Robert Newton. Anchored by one of Mason's many perfect performances, and a terribly affecting central romance (with Kathleen Ryan), it's a magnificent film, spectacularly directed by Carol Reed. The climax is a classic. (5/5)

Inspector Clouseau's first outing was in The Pink Panther (1963, C4, 1.15pm), for which Blake Edwards dusted off a hoary old '30s plot about an international jewel thief, threw in a heap of innuendo and some bits of over-extended farce and smothered the whole thing in barely-formed '60s iconography. David Niven plays Sir Charles Lytton, an incorrigible womaniser and unredeemed collector of other people's trinkets, who's eyeing the titular diamond, owned by princess Claudia Cardinale (the great Italian actress, whose lines here are all dubbed). On Lytton's trail is the bumbling Clouseau (the outrageously gifted caricaturist Peter Sellers, who did far better work elsewhere), so inept that he doesn't even realise his quarry is having an affair with his wife. There are a few very funny moments, but most scenes outstay their welcome, and much of Sellers' comedy involves being slightly clumsy, which is more stressful than funny. It really picks up in the last 20 minutes, though. (2/5)

Over on Film4 there's a lesser Bob Hope outing, an update of the classic 1939 romantic comedy Ninotchka – The Iron Petticoat (1956, Film4, 3.05pm). Hope plays a soldier who woos unsmiling Russian aviatrix Katharine Hepburn (an unlikely bit of casting). Hepburn could create sparks with virtually anyone and here she and Hope make a nice team, but the story lacks momentum and the script has a real shortage of laughs. It's still OK, but not a patch on the earlier film. A musicalised version of Ninotchka, the disappointing Silk Stockings, followed a year later. (2/5)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19

The Fly (1986, Film4, 1.50am FRI) is another "body horror" from genre maestro David Cronenberg – a remake of a 1958 film starring Vincent Price. Jeff Goldblum plays a scientist who devises a way to teleport matter from one place to another. Unfortunately he doesn't see the fly who's popped in the machine with him, and after activating it, begins to notice some curious changes in his body. Nauseating special effects and a wry sense of humour make this one difficult to forget, if a little tough to warm to. The "Brundlefly" gag on the portal's display panel is a gem. (3/5)

Almost Famous (2000, Sky Drama, 3.30pm), Cameron Crowe's lengthy reminiscence about his initation as a Rolling Stone journalist, is as corny as you'd expect, but not as enjoyable. Patrick Fugit is good as Crowe's alter-ego, who goes on tour with rock band Stillwater and falls in with a bunch of groupies (led by Kate Hudson and the underused Fairuza Balk), but the story feels unengaging and artificial, with painful concessions to Hollywood convention. Despite some nice observations about music, hero worship and life on the road, this one never really gets off the ground. Mark it up as a big disappointment. There's one unintentionally amusing scene where Jason Lee – whose singing is dubbed elsewhere in the movie – starts doing some a capella crooning, and makes the most horrible noise I've ever heard. (2/5)

"Is it a kind of dream...?" Art Garfunkel's wonderful theme song is but one of the many fine things about Watership Down (1978, Film4, 4.55pm), an animated movie about rabbits on the run, adapted from Richard Adams' book. The bunnies – voiced by such esteemed actors as John Hurt, Ralph Richardson and Denholm Elliot – are looking for a new home, only partially aware of the danger that lies at every turn. Zero Mostel offers some light relief, while Michael Hordern narrates. (For further evidence of Hordern's extraordinary gift for voiceover, catch the excellent '80s kids film Young Sherlock Holmes.) This is perhaps a notch below Disney's greatest, but required viewing nonetheless. NB: It's probably not suitable for young kids. (4/5)

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20

*SOME SPOILERS*

Don't Look Now (1973, ITV1, 1.10am SAT, with sign language) – A masterpiece, simply, in which bereaved parents Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland travel to wintry, chilly Venice after their young daughter drowns, and experience unexplained premonitions. Artfully directed by maverick British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, and utilising its Italian locales to superlative effect, this peerlessly eerie, well-plotted horror packs one of the cruellest twists in cinema. Heightened performances, potent symbolism and a famous sex scene flesh out (pun intended) this groundbreaking adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's short story. (5/5)

Call Northside 777 (1948, Sky Classics, 10.35am) did something a bit different, striving for new levels of realism in Hollywood as it filmed at the Chicago locations where its real-life story had panned out. Italian cinema was filming heartbreaking social tracts with non-professional actors by this time, but hey, it was a start. It's the kind of shallow but fast-paced, compelling thriller that seems like a classic whilst you're watching it, but fades from memory within a week, as crusading reporter Jimmy Stewart (think of him as me, but with slightly straighter hair) re-opens a decade-old murder case despite opposition from the authorities. Slick and entertaining, with another powerhouse turn from the lead. (4/5)

For #s 70 to 61 in our Top 100, please click on the link below right.Top 100 Movies

The list so far:

#s 100 to 91: featuring His Girl Friday, Stand by Me and The Red Balloon

#s 90 to 86, including Five Easy Pieces, Ghost World and Confessions of Boston Blackie

#s 85 to 81, where you'll find The Edge of the World, Judge Priest and A Thousand Clowns

#s 80 to 76: including The Purple Rose of Cairo, Singin' in the Rain and Lawrence of Arabia

#s 75 to 71: boasting Le Samourai, Kiss Me Kate and Swing Time

"You're guarding space? That's stupid, isn't it? Because someone could break in there and steal all the space and you wouldn't know it's gone, would you?"

70. Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993) - There are some actors who give a single, revelatory performance, then spend the rest of their career struggling to live up to it. Emily Lloyd in Wish You Were Here, Ben Stiller in The Royal Tenenbaums or Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. And then there is David Thewlis. To say that his subsequent turns - in films like American Perfekt, The Island of Dr Moreau and Basic Instinct 2 - have been a bit disappointing after his blistering, hilarious, largely ad-libbed performance in Naked would be deeply kind. Like Kevin Smith before him, he appears to have made some bizarre pact with that feisty, horned chap, trading the promise of a great career for one irradicable blast of greatness. Here, he plays Johnny, a Mancunian motormouth who scoots to London after apparently committing rape. *SOME SPOILERS* There he inveigles himself into the lives of former girlfriend Lesley Sharp and her flatmate, gothic Cockney Katrin Cartlidge, and tours the streets in an intellectual rage - berating security guards, homeless eccentrics and lonely housewives - before getting the kicking of a lifetime. *END OF SPOILERS* Naked is a deeply troubling film, bearing witness to the complete breakdown of British society, and it boasts a hero who's little short of appalling. But it's riddled with brilliance, and boasts more blackly comic laughs and absurdist asides than any state-of-the-nation piece has any right to. That blend of misery, mirth, insightfulness and bristling intelligence is largely thanks to Leigh's improvisational approach, Cartlidge's wonderful supporting turn and Thewlis' stab at immortality.

Favourite bit: Thewlis reacts to the lush vegetation adorning the lobby of a company office. "They say it's a jungle out there - have you seen it in 'ere?"

See also: Life Is Sweet, an earlier effort from Leigh, also featuring Thewlis. It's a slightly spotty, seriocomic look at a working class family's tribulations that too often plays like caricature, but benefits from Timothy Spall's superb supporting characterisation as a wannabe restaurateur and a deeply moving climax.

69. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964) - There are many musicals out there, but not many feature a teenage mother finding security in marriage while the baby's father fights in the Algerian War. Welcome to Demy's musical masterwork, where every word is sung and everyone is sad. Catherine Deneuve is the heroine, whose mother owns an umbrella shop in the titular city, its houses painted in pastel shades, like Balamory. The story of her ill-fated affair and marriage of convenience is told in lushly romantic fashion, building to a glorious winter finale. It's melancholy, touching and unforgettable, with a tremendous score from Michel Legrand.

Favourite bit: Outside a service station, the lovers are reunited, the passing of time doing nothing to quell the passions pounding beneath the surface.

See also: Demy's Young Girls of Rochefort, an upbeat follow-up, also featuring Deneuve, as well as Gene Kelly and George Chakiris. It's almost as good. And get hold of Visconti's magnificent White Nights - also snow-tinged, bittersweet and featuring an inexplicably picturesque petrol station.

68. The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls, 1969) - Whilst inescapably a four-hour documentary about Occupied France, The Sorrow and the Pity is gripping as any thriller. Using nothing more than interviews and a little archive footage, it possesses a wrenching, cumulative power as it details the acts of collaboration and rebellion that followed the Nazi invasion. Resistance leaders, international politicians and unrepentant Nazi officers are among those giving staggering insight, along with a lengthy procession of ordinary people trying to justify what they did and didn't do when their nation came under threat. It's chilling, upsetting and utterly riveting, without a single dip or lull throughout its 249 minutes. The director is the son of Max Ophuls, the German director known for his florid melodramas, who was a key influence on Stanley Kubrick.

Favourite bit is a wholly inappropriate heading here. However, the extensively researched material about French officials' involvement in transporting Jews to the death camps is historically important.

See also: Annie Hall, Woody Allen's messy multiple Oscar-winner, where the film is a key plot-point. Which seems faintly inappropriate. It doubtless got Ophuls' film a larger audience, though.

67. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) - Scripts penned the night before they were filmed. Midget extras employed to cover up the "clipper to America" being too small. An attempt at the 11th hour to remove all references to 'As Time Goes By' thwarted by the lead actress' new haircut. The making of Casablanca was chaotic. And the result? A timeless romance: wittier than a roomful of Stephen Frys, more moving than a ride with Fishers of Harrogate, and with a propaganda message so effective it makes me want to sell my brothers for war bonds. Yes, Casablanca is a great advert for mayhem. Humphrey Bogart, who'd only graduated to leading roles the previous year with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, is Rick Blaine, a taciturn, unsentimental nightclub owner whose isolationist existence is shattered when a woman from his past (Ingrid Bergman) comes back into his life, her resistance hero lover (Paul Henreid) in tow. All three are superb and the supporting cast is the sort you dream about - I've watched movies just because Peter Lorre was in them, or Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt or John Qualen. They're all here, along with Dooley Wilson, Sydney Greenstreet, Leonid Kinskey and S.Z. Sakall. Don't be put off by Casablanca's "classic" status or the supposedly extensive running time (many seem to think it's three hours long, rather than 99 minutes) - it's superbly entertaining, and formidably funny despite, and occasionally because of, its weighty themes. It's a wonderful film.

Favourite bit: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine..." A night sky, a bottle of booze and a big clunking fist - Bogart takes out his misery on his office desk, after Bergman's re-appearance. The Le Marseillaise set piece is a triumph too, but they nicked that from our #62, so one point off there.

See also: Bogart's early parts as a crook opposite James Cagney, in Angels with Dirty Faces - as a shifty, weedy lawyer - and The Roaring Twenties - as an amoral crime kingpin - along with his breakthrough role in the 1941 remake of The Maltese Falcon. Falcon is a superlative private eye flick, written and directed by John Huston and with a stellar cast. Only Mary Astor's inexplicably nervy femme fatale appears in the "debit" column.

*A FAIR FEW SPOILERS, SO TAKE CARE*

66. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) - A distraught husband fiddles with the window fittings in a detective's office, after learning of his wife's infidelity. "All right, Curly," says a voice. "Enough's enough. You can't eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday." That's the opening of Chinatown, a scintillating neo-noir from the pen of Robert Towne. His screenplay, perhaps the finest in all cinema, weaves a labyrinthine plot populated by subverted genre characters. So Jack Nicholson's smartarse PI Jake Gittes doesn't really know all the answers, the "femme fatale" is the only selfless person in the movie and the baddie is ten times darker than anyone was ready for. Towne's dialogue is just spectacular. Here's Gittes sparring with a suspect after his nose is slit open by a very nasty little man (director Polanski in a cameo). "My goodness, what happened to your nose?" "I cut myself shaving." "You ought to be more careful. That must really smart." "Only when I breathe." It's that good all the way through. "How'd you get past the guard?" Lt Escobar asks Gittes. "Well, to tell you the truth, I lied a little." And here's a line that never gets mentioned, from the town hall scene, a masterclass of repetition that would see you thrown off Just a Minute within seconds: "Now you can swim in it, you can fish in it, you can sail in it — but you can't drink it, you can't water your lawns with it, you can't irrigate an orange grove with it..." The direction is understated but spot-on, aided by Jerry Goldman's score (a pastiche, but so much more than that) and the terrific acting. Nicholson's delivery, in particular, makes the most of Towne's script - the actor pretty much retired from being interesting after Chinatown, but this is a phenomenal last hurrah.

Favourite bit: The devastating last line. Gittes' low-fi detective techniques are memorable too, like checking when a car leaves somewhere by letting it run over your watch.

See also: For more great neo-noir, how about The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman's fine deconstruction of the genre, released the year before Chinatown? Cutter's Way and The Last Seduction are well worth it too. The 1975 version of Farewell, My Lovely (filmed previously as The Falcon Takes Over and Murder, My Sweet), starring Robert Mitchum, is more traditional, and a touch less interesting, though both Mitchum and the first scene are exceptional. Chinatown 2, or The Two Jakes, is one big letdown.

For #s 75 to 71, please click on the link below right.65. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) - "Everyone said he was a genius, I just thought he was a bit of a show-off," said the presumably envious Rex Harrison of stage and screen legend Charles Laughton, his awesomely talented contemporary. Laughton's sole venture into directing was the extraordinary Night of the Hunter, in which a disappointingly hammy Robert Mitchum stalks two children through a swamp, trying to relieve them of the stolen money their late father has left them. Shot in the German Expressionist style (lots of shadows and bizarre camera angles) and soundtracked by a handful of American hymns and folk songs, it absolutely tanked at the box-office. It's since been re-appraised as an American classic, along with such flops as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Return to Oz (well, we can but hope). The Night of the Hunter is a true original, with a singular Gothic feel, thanks to the weird, ageless storyline, precocious performances from the kids and the haunting imagery - which is wall-to-wall. The only shortcoming is Mitchum's oddly OTT performance. He's acted off the screen and up the street by silent movie titan Lillian Gish, playing the youngsters' potential saviour.

Favourite bit: Gish and Mitchum's sing-off, as his creepy baritone and her steady, soothing voice combine for a striking take on 'Leaning on the Everlasting Arms'. That's the battle between religious tolerance and intolerance right there, for anyone who might have missed it.

See also: Laughton's follow-up, err, oh I see. How about the weird sex Western Duel in the Sun? The link? Gish, who's fine as a sympathetic matriarch. Laughton was a lovely actor - one of his more underrated turns is opposite Deanna Durbin in It Started with Eve. It's one of three movies he made with the Canadian chanteuse. His acting is particularly touching in the 'Goin' Home' scene, one of my favourite in all of film.

Trivia note: Billy Chapin, who plays the older child, first appeared on screen in Nunally Johnson's Casanova Brown, as Gary Cooper's baby girl.

64. Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges, 1944) - After penning some of the best movies of the 1930s and early '40s - If I Were King, Easy Living and Remember the Night among them - screenwriter Preston Sturges sold the script for The Great McGinty to Paramount for $1. The catch? They let him direct. So began a series of riotous comedies that tickled every sacred cow in sight, and took its flamboyant writer-director to the top of the pile. Hail the Conquering Hero is one of his best. Drawing on Sturges' elongated mantra, it remains not only remarkably fresh, but also remarkably funny, mixing satire, slapstick and social awareness to confront political corruption, hero worship and blind patriotism. Based on the classic Sturges premise of unpleasant, unfathomably ridiculous things happening to nice people, this masterpiece sees Bracken - rejected by the army due to an ear infection - greeted as a war hero. Crucially, the director coached one of the finest turns in cinema from owl-faced newcomer Eddie Bracken, his heart quietly breaking as he unwittingly betrays his widowed mother, war hero father and childhood sweetheart through one long, ridiculous deception. It's moving, memorable and chest-hurtingly funny.

Favourite bit: Shameless self-promoter Everett D. Noble (character actor and Mr Monopoly lookalike Raymond Walburn) dictates an election speech to his secretary's boyfriend, who he suspects may be an idiot. "Read it back to me," he requests, prompting a stream of utter gibberish from his ad hoc helper. In terms of pathos, Bracken's climactic speech has me welling up every time.

See also: Anything from Sturges' creative peak. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, which somehow sneaked past the censors despite getting its unmarried protagonist pregnant by an unknown soldier, is uproarious; Christmas in July, with clerk Dick Powell tricked into thinking he's won a fortune, is one of the director's most underrated outings.

63. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) - With our #38 - and perhaps a little help from Star Wars - this was the movie that got me into movies. I was laid up with a knee injury, trying to find a new hobby and happened to catch the last hour of On the Waterfront, as my brother was watching it. I followed that with the first half hour. Then I watched the whole thing again. And twice more the next week. As weary friends can attest, I can still quote the taxicab scene verbatim. "You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit, you shoulda taken care of me so I didn't have to take them dives for the short-end money", and all that. A major critical and commercial success in 1954, Marlon Brando's first Oscar win as Best Actor is, sadly, seen through the prism of the director's subsequent actions. Which in this case means: everyone thinks Kazan is trying to justify naming names to the HUAC. You can see where they're coming from, but Kazan didn't write the script (it was penned by Budd Schulberg, who based the scenarios largely on fact), which puts great stock in people who stand up for what is right, no matter what the cost - rather than simply applauding informants. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that Kazan could have identified with the weak Charley, who shoulda looked out for his friends a little bit? In purely cinematic terms, the movie is unimpeachable, skilfully scripted and directed, and powered by Brando's revolutionary performance. Did I mention that I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody... Instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley.

Favourite bit: The taxicab scene. Look, do you want me to start all that again?

See also: Brando's first two films, The Men and A Streetcar Named Desire, or his '70s renaissance in The Godfather (yup, it's not on the list, sorry).

62. La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) is an early humanist masterpiece from a director who made many. Its message is three-pronged. War is wrong. The old order is crumbling. Chivalry is dead. The story sees two French officers (Pierre Fresnay and Jean Gabin) captured by the Germans during World War One. In captivity they meet a cross-section of European society, including high-minded aristocratic captain Erich von Stroheim, and plot their escape. It's subtle, literate and loaded with import, with a couple of scenes that just take the breath away. Incidentally, fans of Casablanca (which pilfered the national anthem set piece), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and The Great Escape should be grateful to Renoir. All three films lent a little on his masterpiece.

Favourite bit: His illusions shattered, von Stroheim takes the scissors to his geranium plant.

See also: For more great Renoir films, check out Boudu sauve des eaux, La bete humaine, Le crime de Monsieur Lange and La regle du jeu.

61. Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) - "In the three and a half months since my name last appeared at the head of this page I have carted my travel-stained carcase to (among other places) some of the filthiest and most festering slums in Asia. But nothing, nothing, nothing - neither the hopeless leper colonies of East Pakistan, the back streets of Bombay nor the gutters of Calcutta - has left me with such a feeling of nausea and depression as I got this week while sitting through a new British film called Peeping Tom." Wow. That's the Express review that greeted Michael Powell's career-killing masterwork in 1960. Viewed almost 50 years on, Peeping Tom looks suspiciously like the best horror movie ever made. Carl Boehm is the photographer whose childhood traumas cause him to murder, with even kind-hearted girlfriend (Anna Massey) not safe from his urges. Powell created numerous great films and this is one of them: innovative, arresting and with a beating heart beneath the blank-eyed terror.

Favourite bit: Boehm climbs onto some rafters to watch the police investigate one of his slayings. Then things start falling out of his coat. A masterclass in suspense, especially since we should really want him to get caught.

See also: I'm not a big horror fan, but Dead of Night, Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Innocents, and the original Invasion of the Bodysnatchers are worth ten hours of anyone's time (not each).

Thanks for reading. More next week.

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